Appendix A: Acknowledgments

The Academy began scoping a project on the American political economy in the summer of 2020, and is grateful to the following individuals for lending their expertise to discussions that helped shape the form and focus of this Commission: Randall Akee, Thomas Alexander Aleinikoff, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Donald Berwick, Samuel Bowles, Jason Brennan, Anna Burger, Wendy Carlin, Oren Cass, Joshua Cohen, Cecilia Conrad, Tyler Cowen, Alan Dachs, Angus Deaton, Matthew Desmond, Lot Diaz, Ezekiel Emanuel, Roger Ferguson, Jr., Nancy Folbre, Nancy Foner, David French, Adam Gamoran, Matthew Gentzkow, Peter Georgescu, Claudia Goldin, Louis Gomez, Michael Graetz, Robert Greenstein, Evelynn Hammonds, Jennifer Harris, Julian Vasquez Heilig, Stephen Heintz, Antonia Hernández, Joni Hersch, Elizabeth Hinton, Mellody Hobson, Jennifer Hochschild, Shirley Hoogstra, Sherrilyn Ifill, John Inazu, Tonika Lewis Johnson, Miriam Jorgensen, Joe Kalt, Lawrence Katz, Larry Kramer, Ilyana Kuziemko, Tim Lampkin, Erika Lee, Earl Lewis, Michael Lind, Bettina Love, Colin Mayer, Kathleen McCartney, Paula McClain, Suzanne Mettler, Helen Milner, Alondra Nelson, Indra Nooyi, Mary Pattillo, Seth Pollak, Diane Ravitch, Jennifer Reich, Robert Reich, Darren Reisberg, Condoleezza Rice, Jennifer Richeson, John Rogers, Frances Rosenbluth, Debra Satz, Ian Shapiro, Michele Siqueiros, Ganesh Sitaraman, Jim Stone, Noelle Stout, Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Thomas Sugrue, Theresa Sullivan, Kathleen Thelen, Heather Ann Thompson, Rajiv Vinnakota, Dorian Warren, Peter Wehner, Martin West, Elise Westhoff, Cormekki Whitley, Martin Wolf, and Laura Zabel. Our gratitude, too, to four early-career scholars for preparing literature reviews and data scans to inform the Commission’s first conversations: Kelly Goodman, Sophie Jacobson, Brian Neumann, and Luna White.

Since the launch of the Commission in October 2021, we have been fortunate to learn from numerous people, whose ideas, experiences, and creativity informed this report and the Commission’s other products. We would like to thank the roughly 215 people who participated in our listening sessions for talking about their lives and discussing ways to improve their community. Our thanks, too, to everyone who helped facilitate our listening sessions, including Lisa Adkins, Kimberley Coolidge, Dee Davis, Sarah Elizabeth Dill, Sarah Gesner, Lyzette Gonzalez, Shulamith Jacobi, Allison Carter Keeley, Vincent Kim, David Martinez, Carlil Pittman, Hernan Rodriguez, Daniel Tollefson, and many others. Thanks also to the staff at Cortico who facilitated session transcription and storage and Matthew Barton at the Library of Congress for helping manage the archiving of these sessions in their collection. Our gratitude to everyone in Williamsport, Tulare County, Houston, and Dearborn who agreed to be photographed for our photojournalism effort; to Nina Berman, who helped manage this project; and to our four photographers: Cindy Elizabeth, Caroline Gutman, Maen Hammad, and Adam Perez. The CORE Score would not exist without the tireless effort of Annabelle Hutchinson and Josh Limpert. Our thanks also to the team at Darkhorse Analytics for bringing the Score to life and to Zoltan Hajnal and Mackenzie Lockhart for their help developing the measurement of quality of political representation.

Thanks, also, to all those individuals who met with the Commission to discuss the work of reimagining the economy: former Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, Tonika Lewis Johnson, Rep. Jim Himes, Rep. Bryan Steil, and the staff of the U.S. House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth, especially Jack Chambers, Harry Fones, Mark Henson, and Diane Lim. Our gratitude to everyone who participated in the Commission’s roundtable on how the media covers the economy: Eric Adler, Binyamin Appelbaum, Rodney A. Brooks, Jesse Eisinger, Kalea Hall, Beth Macy, Tory Parrish, Alissa Quart, and Kai Ryssdal. Our appreciation to everyone who Commission members, cochairs, or staff consulted over the course of our work: Danielle Allen, Jeanne Batalova, Allen Blue, Margot Brandenburg, Wendy Carlin, Nicholas Carnes, Ernesto Cortes, Deborah Fallows, Aria Finger, Rana Faroohar, Lewis Friedland, Michael Fix, Tony Guidotti, Gordon Hanson, Elliot Haspel, Don Howard, Nien-hê Hsieh, Janelle Jones, Karin Kimbrough, Molly Kinder, Matt Leighninger, Phillip Longman, Barry Lynn, Margaret Levi, David McCullough III, Jamila Michener, Julio Medina, Patrick Methvin, Lina Miller, David Morgan, Andre Oliver, Laura Perna, Sharat Raghavan, Sean Reardon, Dani Rodrik, Martha Ross, Ethan Rouen, Josh Rowland, Ben Sachs, Mal Salter, Rebecca Sandefur, Arthur Segel, Roy Swan, Zeynep Ton, Steven Waldman, and Tim Wu.

Finally, this report benefited greatly from the insight of external reviewers, who identified numerous ways to strengthen the report. Thanks to David Autor, Marianne Bertrand, Margaret Levi, Beth Macy, Richard Parsons, and Paul Pierson for their insight and their ideas on how to reimagine the economy.